Traces of War: The Revival of Silk Weaving in Cambodia

By Morimoto Kikuo

 

This paper examines silk production in contemporary Cambodia, and the work I have done to revive silk weaving in this country.  Traditional silk production was one of the aspects affected by the political and social instability occurring in Cambodia during the last quarter century.  As stability returned to the Cambodian countryside, I conducted a UNESCO-funded research survey on Khmer or Cambodian silk production in 1995.  Some of the questions addressed were: where in Cambodia was silk woven and to what scale; were natural dyes still used; and did sericulture exist or was imported silk used to weave the textiles?  I found that silk weaving continued in a few areas in Cambodia, but the thread was imported from Vietnam since sericulture ceased in all but a few villages around 1970.  At the time the survey was conducted, merchants controlled silk production of young weavers in Takeo and Kompong Cham provinces.  Other breaks in tradition were that chemical dyes replaced natural dyes and large motifs replaced small motifs.  The change in the size of the motifs indicated that less time and skill was invested in silk production.  The use of modern tools has also altered traditional weaving.  In order to revive traditional methods of silk weaving, I founded an institute to have elderly weavers teach younger generations the art of natural dyes and complicated patterns, reintroduced sericulture by obtaining silkworms in Thailand. 

 

Morimoto Kikuo is the director of the Institute of Khmer Traditional Textiles located in Siem Reap, Cambodia, which he founded in 1996 with support of the Japan Foundation.  The goal of the Institute is to restore and preserve Cambodian textile traditions by providing a place for women to weave and dye silk, encourage younger generations to continue weaving to preserve their national heritage, and activate a promising marketplace for the textiles woven by the students and teachers, and promote other activities such as sericulture.  Mr. Morimoto had spent many years previously in northeast Thailand working with natural dyes and silk weaving projects, including working with Khmer (the dominant ethnic group of Cambodia) weavers located in this region.